NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- Officials in New York City and across the Tri-State said they’re monitoring TikTok posts warning of shooting and bomb threats at schools across the country Friday, but they've also assured parents the viral posts were not considered credible.
The social media threats had many educators in the U.S. on edge as they circulated in the aftermath of a deadly school shooting in Michigan, which has been followed by numerous copycat threats to schools elsewhere. The vague, anonymous posts circulating online warned that multiple schools would receive shooting and bomb threats.
New York City Schools Chancellor Meisha Ross Porter sent a message to families Thursday about the social media posts.
“Every threat to a school community is taken extremely seriously and we work closely with the NYPD to investigate threats made to any school community,” Porter said.
The chancellor noted that the “social media challenge is not specific to only New York City” and that “many of the posts are general and not specific to one school.”
Porter said people should call 911 immediately or 1-888-NYC-SAFE if their school is named in a specific threat.
“Additional supports will be deployed to the school as needed,” Porter said.
She said the Department of Education will continue to monitor the posts and warned, “Threats of violence have very real consequences regardless of the reason the threat was made, and we do not want our young people to jeopardize their bright futures over social media challenges such as these.”
The false threats have been spreading on TikTok, with people posting about their worries if shootings could happen Friday across the country. But who actually originated that Friday is “Shoot Up Your School Day” isn’t known.
In a tweet Friday, TikTok said it had "exhaustively searched for content that promotes violence at schools today, but have still found nothing. What we find are videos discussing this rumor and warning others to stay safe."
The company said the FBI, Homeland Security and local authorities have all "confirmed there's no credible threat."
In the meantime, the company said it's removing "alarmist warnings" that violate its misinformation policy and will report any posts that promote violence to law enforcement.
The company also expressed concern about news coverage of the viral posts, writing, "Media reports have been widespread and based on rumors rather than facts, and we are deeply concerned that the proliferation of local media reports on an alleged trend that has not been found on the platform could end up inspiring real world harm."
Nassau County police said Thursday that they’ve been dealing with a rash of threats all school year, which have been false, but still have caused massive issues in school districts.
Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder said there has been a 148% increase in school threats since the beginning of the school year compared to the same time last year.
"You take a stock photo of a weapon, put that under a post and write you’re going to shoot up a school. It goes from town-to-town and state-to-state,” said Ryder.
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Ryder said despite the fact the threats aren’t credible, officers will be out visiting schools, which could ultimately pull them away from other tasks. He urged people who see threats to call 911, not spread the information.
Just last week, police arrested a 12-year-old girl from Nassau for posting threats online. Ryder said that threat shut down a district for multiple days.
Off the Island, police in Yonkers posted a statement that they were aware of the same social media threats. They joined in saying, “There is zero credible information regarding specific threats to Yonkers Public Schools or private institutions,” and that they’d continue to monitor the situation.
In New Jersey, Gov. Phil Murphy said there were no “known specific threats” against schools in the state after speaking to State Police.
Hoboken police echoed a similar sentiment.
Despite the lack of credibility found by many officials, some schools in Michigan and Washington will temporarily close or increase police presence, according to Bloomberg.
Some districts are particularly on edge weeks after four students were killed in a school shooting in Oxford, Michigan.
In a statement on Twitter, TikTok said it was working with law enforcement to investigate.
“We handle even rumored threats with utmost seriousness,” the statement said, “which is why we’re working with law enforcement to look into warnings about potential violence at schools even though we have not found evidence of such threats originating or spreading via TikTok.”
Meanwhile, Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal is working on legislation to make social media platforms more accountable.
"The tech firms now have this very broad, almost complete legal immunity against any accountability, the effort really has to be done to curtail that immunity so they can be held accountable when people are harmed and they have some knowledge about how the destructive content is doing that harm," Blumenthal said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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